Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Emotional Labour

"Emotional Labour," as defined by Seth Godin in a podcast by Spark 97, is to do the difficult work that others are not willing to do. That the act of connecting with another human being and making a change even when it is not easy to facilitate at the time...

Seth Godin is talking about the individual who is willing to take the initiative, give his/her ideas away for free so that he/she can get their ideas out there. This is because if your ideas are not out there then no one knows about them and they are worthless. Seth also talks about attention being the most precious thing that anyone should strive for, because having someone pay attention to you is the only way to get your ideas out there.

Not many people can explain or say this better than Seth Godin, and I'm not trying to either. I'm just hoping that by sharing with you the what, who's, and how's of my experiences I will be able to inspire some of you to put your ideas out there and get the attention you deserve.

Emotional labour for me is not just about getting my work or ideas noticed, but helping my children express and achieve their ideas. Weather it's in karate, gymnastics or trying to organize a club (Aavery has had a drawing club in previous years, this year it's basketball). I take great pride putting in the "Emotional Labour," to help them see their ideas come to fruition.

An example of someone giving something away for free that I have come across is a website devoted to providing royalty/licence free vector images is Vector Junky. On their website you can find just about anything you can think of, and other than having to wait 60 sec's in between downloads they don't ask for much. Yes there are ads on the site and they have a second section of graphics that are from Shutterstock (which is a pay site), you don't have to look at these.

A website I like to look in on that I feel is truly an Emotional Labour for those who run it is a memorial site for Micheal Turner. Micheal Turner was a comic book artist who got his start drawing backgrounds. That's it, just the backgrounds weather a city scape, land scape, or the inside of a secret hideout that's what he did. Eventually he gained recognition and went on to draw characters such as Supergirl, Batman, Superman,

Then he moved on to work on Witchblade and Tombraider.

After achieving some good success with these characters he went on to develop his own character Aspen for his own title Fathom.

This led him to launching his own company Aspen Comics. The guys at Aspen Comics carry on and it was here that I found the next person I would like to introduce you to, Marcus To.

Marcus, is good at doing Emotional Labour as well, by sharing sneak peaks of his current or upcoming work. I love checking his twitter feed to see what he is working on.
https://twitter.com/#!/marcusto

There you have it, I hope that by me sharing these websites and artists I have been able to change your mind about weather or not to put yourself out there for everyone to see. I made the leap, here, and I hope that you well enjoy looking through my blogs as much as I am having bring them to you.